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Biathlon 2018/Men's sprint
Format The competition exists out of three rounds of 3.3 kilometres, broken up by shooting at five targets. The athletes started 30 seconds from each other, each missed target causing an additional round of 500 meters. The competitor with the fastest time after 10 kilometres (or additional rounds) is the winner. Preview Eighty-seven athletes qualified for the event, and Johannes Thingnes Boe and Martin Fourcade had dominated the season. Having two World Cup wins in the previous season, Thingnes Boe had a slight edge over Fourcade, who had only one win, despite shooting clean in all World Cups. The only other participant with a sprint win was Johannes' brother Tarjei Boe, though that seemed to be a fluke in the season, his second-best result being a fifth place. There were five other participants who had appeared on the podium in the World Cups, and with those medalists being Erik Lesser, Arnd Peiffer, Emil Hegle Svendsen, Antonin Guigonnat and Jakov Fak, these were medal contenders in the sprint. Other outsiders were reigning world champion Benedikt Doll, Simon Schempp and Julian Eberhard. Summary The circumstances of this race were tough, with a very low temperature and a hard and constantly changing wind. This could already be noticed on the first lap, where several favorites missed several of their five shots, forcing them to cover a longer distance. Where Jakov Fak and Emil Hegle Svendsen missed once, Frenchman Simon Desthieux and Tarjei Boe missed twice, and the big favorites Martin Fourcade and Johannes Thingnes Boe even missed three times, losing their chance on a medal. After the first shooting round, the lead was taken by Norwegian Erlend Bjoentegaard, with Martin Otcenas only 2 seconds behind him, and the first starter Timofei Lapshin, outsider Simon Schempp, Tomas Kaukenas and Benjamin Weger all within ten seconds, shooting clean. After the first round of shooting, only 29 men were able to shoot without missing. The second lap would end with shooting while standing, and usually, this is seen as the more difficult version of shooting in biathlon. After the second lap and the second turn shooting, only four men were able to stay faultless, and while Arnd Peiffer and Michal Krcmar were able to climb into medal contention by staying without mistakes, Olli Hiidensalo and Dmytro Pidruchnyi were only able to stay 15th and 14th, respectively. Dominik Windisch and Julian Eberhard were able to climb to third and fourth with only one mistake, staying ahead of the biathletes who missed once, while Timofei Lapshin completed the top 5, also with only one mistake. Bjoentegaard dropped down to eighth place, with two mistakes, while Otcenas dropped down to 57th place, with four misses. The fastest third lap was run by Desthieux, who was able to gain twelve spots in the ranking, climbing from 24th place to 12th place. Eberhard raced to the second-fastest time of the last lap, consolidating his fourth place, but missing out on a medal by only 0.7 seconds after Windisch was able to hold him off from the bronze medal. Arnd Peiffer was able to defend his leading position, and despite his best efforts, Michal Krcmar was not able to promote his silver medal to a gold one. Bjoentegaard climbed to fifth place with the fifth-fastest time of the last lap, although the difference with number six Benedikt Doll was only 0.2 seconds, while Schempp lost 4 seconds to finish seventh. Martin Fourcade was able to partially compensate for the misses of the prone round, and finished eighth, overtaking Serafin Wiestner and Lukas Hofer, who were able to finish in the top 10. Favorite Johannes Thingnes Boe was only able to get the 31st position after four misses. Results Biathlon 2018/Men's sprint/StartList|Startlist Biathlon 2018/Men's sprint/Standings|Standings||true Category:Pyeongchang 2018 Events Category:Biathlon 2018